


above your mother's empire

by sixseater



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-29
Packaged: 2018-03-02 21:52:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2827319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixseater/pseuds/sixseater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura's excitement at being named prefect is severely dampened when she finds out she has to patrol Hogwarts' empty corridors at night with Carmilla Karnstein.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

Laura carefully pins her new prefect badge to her robes. She takes a deep breath and slowly releases it. She frowns at the mirror and adjusts slightly askew yellow badge. And then adjusts her tie as well. She definitely does not want to look anything less than perfect for her first day as prefect.

And then she takes a peek at the clock and realizes that she has about a minute to get from where she is at the back of the train to the very front, where the meeting is taking place.

She takes one last look at herself in the mirror before running out of the bathroom and into the crowded passageway.

She's slightly out of breath when she finally makes it—just in time. She takes a second to compose herself and then

"God, are you going to stand there all day? Some of us have better things to do."

Laura groans.  _Of course_. She turns around and sees Carmilla Karnstein standing in front of her, with a prefect badge pinned to her lapel and a dour expression on her face. "It's nice to see you too, Carmilla."

Carmilla rolls her eyes. "Will you just open the door already?"

"Somebody's excited about this meeting," Laura observes.

Carmilla rolls her eyes again. "I just want to get this over with as quickly as possible. The less time I spend with you dimwits, the better." She finally decides to push her way past Laura and into the compartment. "Oh, and your tie's crooked," she says before heading inside.

Laura looks down and resists the urge to find the nearest mirror. She settles for moving the tie around a bit, then takes another breath to tamp down her nerves. When she finally enters the compartment, everyone inside turns to look at her and she realizes that she's late.

"Nice of you to join us, Laura," Perry, head girl, says to her.

Flushing, she takes the only empty seat—which, of course, is beside Carmilla.

"Now that we're all here, we can finally get down to business." Perry stands up and claps her hands together. She takes out her wand and flicks it. A bunch of colourful charts and slides float around behind her. "First of all, I'd like to welcome our eight new prefects this year. We'll go over some basic procedure first to get you all acclimated to prefect responsibilities." One slide floats away from the rest and stops to the right of Perry.

Laura tries to pay attention after that, she really does, but all she can focus on is the movement going on beside her. Carmilla's drawing something in her notebook. It looks like a cat. Laura’s surprised to note that Carmilla’s not a bad artist.

Perry has now moved on to a slide titled "Fostering Inter-House Relationships," complete with statistical representation of the responses to a survey Perry made them fill out last year.

Laura looks back down to Carmilla's notebook, and—oh.

Carmilla's now moved on to drawing a very crude depiction of a potion blowing up in a girl's face. Complete with an arrow pointing to the girl that is labelled "Laura Hollis." Laura would really like to wipe that smug smirk off of Carmilla's face.

"Very mature," she whispers, possibly a bit louder than she intended to.

"Was there something you wanted to add, Laura?" Perry asks her sharply. Whoops.

"Ah, no. Just, um, wanted to let you know how much I'm learning from this presentation." She forces a smile at Perry. Carmilla snickers and Laura resists the urge to glare at her.

"Very well then. You're all dismissed."

Crap. Laura's somehow managed to miss the entire thing. The only slide that's still floating around the room is the patrol schedule for the year. She starts to move in closer to get a better look and—

"Looks like we'll be seeing a lot of each other this year, creampuff," Carmilla says to her and _winks_ before leaving.

Laura deflates. She hopes that this is some terrible nightmare. She'll be woken up by her father any second and find out that Carmilla is definitely  _not_  a prefect and wasn't that nightmare just hilarious?

She pinches herself. Hard. Ow.

Nope, still here. She allows herself a brief moment of self-pity before straightening.

She absolutely will not allow Carmilla Karnstein to ruin her fifth year.

*

Which is why she's now trying to chase down Perry in the common room later that night. She was going to do it right after the feast, but she lost Perry in the wildness that was herding all the first-years to the common room for the first time.

She finally intercepts Perry as she's making her way up to her dormitory, jumping in front of her as she approaches the stairs.

"Yes, Laura?" Perry prompts when Laura doesn't say anything.

"About the schedule, is there any way you could—"

"No."

"But you haven't even—"

"The answer is no, Laura. If you actually listened to my presentation, you would know that the patrol schedules are carefully handcrafted in order to facilitate the optimal amount of inter-house cooperation among the prefects. Changing even one thing would mean having to rework the entire schedule."

"But you _know_ Carmilla and I don't get along. The lake will freeze over before we become friends. Can I just patrol with Betty or something?"

"You’re a prefect now. You have to set an example for the rest of the school. That includes putting up with people you are not fond of for the betterment of Hogwarts," Perry says. She smiles. "Besides, you and Carmilla now have ample opportunity to get to know each other better!"

"Please don't make me do this, Perry." Laura's just about ready to get down on her knees and beg, at this point.

"Absolutely not. Now, if you'll let me through, I have to get to bed so I can get an early start on tomorrow. I'd advise you to do the same."

Laura moves aside before dejectedly sinking to the floor. This is  _not_  how she planned things.

 


	2. the patrol partner from hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> things go exactly as well as laura expects them to with carmilla. methinks carmilla tries a little too hard to get a rise out of laura. sparks fly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> taking a break from my trip to post this. all mistakes are mine, please point them out to me because i'm a perfectionist. future chapters will take place over the course of a month, so updates may be a little slow. questions can be directed to me on tumblr (or on here but i will probably be quicker to respond on there)

_September, 2010_

Laura bumps into Betty as she's entering the Great Hall for breakfast the next morning.

"Looking good, Hollis." She points to the prefect badge on her chest as she says it—green to match Laura's yellow.

"You too, Betty." They grin at each other.

They're both early risers, so the Hall is mostly empty when Betty heads over to the Hufflepuff table with Laura.

"Did you have any luck trying to get the schedule changed last night?"

Laura groans.

"I take it that's a no then?" she asks with a chuckle.

Laura just shakes her head.

"Hey, it could be worse. Perry could have put you with your ex."

Laura drops her head into her hands. "You are  _really_  not helping." She wants to think about her short lived relationship with Danny even  _less_  than she wants to think about having to spend her nights with Carmilla.

"Sorry." Betty doesn't sound sorry at all. She continues, "Hey, at least Carmilla's easy on the eyes."

Betty's smirking and waggling her eyebrows when Laura finally lifts her head. She decides to ignore Betty's comments and reaches for some toast.

Laura glares at Perry when she walks in five minutes later.

She's running her hand through her owl's feathers (her dad must have sent the letter right after dropping her off at King’s Cross) and waiting for her schedule when she notices Carmilla sauntering in, late as always. She notices her perfectly straight tie and tries not to think about what Betty said.  
  
*

Laura's just starting to get back into the rhythm of things when she has to go on her first patrol with Carmilla. She's been dreading today for nearly an entire week. Carmilla's difficult to deal with under regular circumstances and Laura doesn't even want to think about how unpleasant Carmilla is going to be tonight. And all the other nights that she’s going to have to suffer through.

They meet up outside of the Great Hall, and Carmilla is, unsurprisingly, fifteen minutes late.

"Do you even care about this at all?" Laura snaps when Carmilla finally arrives, because she's on edge about this after a week of stewing in her feelings, and Carmilla's lackadaisical attitude about prefect duties is making her even more angry.

Carmilla rolls her eyes. "Relax, creampuff." She turns away from Laura and starts going up the stairs, in the complete opposite direction they're supposed to be going (Laura cornered Carmilla a couple days ago with a detailed map of routes that they would take while patrolling, which Carmilla is clearly intent on ignoring).

Laura, completely indignant, runs to catch up to her and says, "You may be completely disaffected by everything, but I  _actually_  take this seriously and I'd really appreciate it if you could just  _respect that_." When Carmilla doesn't respond, she continues, "If you could just  _pretend_ to care, this process would be so much easier for both of us—and stop walking so quickly!'

Carmilla, who has not slowed down at all, looks back and says, "If you could  _stop talking_ , this process would be so much easier for me and my ears."

Laura throws up her hands. "God, you are impossible."

They walk around in silence, and Laura tries to keep her mouth shut (not because Carmilla told her to, but because Laura really doesn't want to waste any more energy on her), but the sound of their footsteps echoing in the silent hallways is just too much for Laura. Each footstep is stripping down the last threads of Laura's patience and by the time they reach the bottom of the Astronomy Tower, she's ready for a fight.

Laura stops, takes Carmilla's wrist, and turns her around. "Why did you even agree to be a prefect if you're not even going to try? Are you actually incapable of taking anything seriously? You pretend to be cool and disaffected when, in reality, you're just miserable and alone."

Carmilla examines her fingernails all through Laura's tirade. She raises her eyebrow and asks, "Are you done now?"

This just makes Laura even angrier. "No, I'm not. This is something that I actually care about and something that I've worked hard for. Not all of us have things handed to us on a silver platter. I'm sure Sarah Jane or Natalie would have  _loved_ to have this job instead of you."

When she finishes, it's clear that Carmilla is  _angry_  and Laura's obviously struck a nerve, but her voice is calm and even when she says, "There are things in this world that you can't even begin to comprehend. You. know. nothing. And the sooner you stop with this Hermione Granger act, the better."

Laura shakes her head and starts walking again before stopping suddenly and turning back around. "You know what? No. You're wrong. I may be the only child of an overprotective dad, and there may be a lot of things in this world that I don't understand, but I do know that it's not  _wrong_  to care about something, and it's certainly not wrong to _work_ for something you want."

Carmilla rolls her eyes. "Whatever," she says before walking up the Astronomy Tower steps. Laura thinks that Carmilla probably has the right idea, because she'd really like bust somebody right about now.

*

She's having breakfast in the Great Hall the next day when LaFontaine asks her about what happened last night. She shoots another glare at Perry when they ask. "She's the patrol partner from hell."

"I heard from Sarah Jane that you two got into a yelling match near the astronomy tower," Betty says.

Laura grimaces. She and Carmilla found Sarah Jane and Kirsch out after hours in the Astronomy Tower last night right after their fight. "They heard that?"

"You two yelled at each other?" LaF asks with a grin.

Laura shrugs. "It wasn't that big of a deal."

"That's not what I heard," Betty interjects.

Perry tsks. "I'm sure if the two of you just  _talked_ to each other…"

"I warned you this would happen when you put them together, Per," LaF whispers to her.

"So did I," Laura says.

But—she strangely feels much better about the whole patroling-with-Carmilla thing after last night's outburst. Part of her feels bad for saying some of those things, but the much larger part of her is relaxed now that she's had the opportunity to air her grievances. It's like she's jumped all the way from anger to acceptance in one night.

She doesn't go as far as to smile at Carmilla when they pass each other in the corridor as she's leaving the Great Hall, but she doesn't glare either.

*

Which is just as well, because her professors are not messing around this year. Even though they won't be sitting for OWLs for months, the spectre of the exams hang over all of her classes—and she's starting to feel the stress.

It's only six days into the school year and she's already drowning in course work. She's always been the type to rely on hard work more than natural ability—at least when it comes to potions, by far her most difficult class.

Struggling with her potion (it's supposed to be green, but somehow her's is some weird shade of blue) is made all the worse by Carmilla, who's sitting across the aisle from her. Her potion is the perfect shade of green. After sharing classes with her for years, Laura knows that Carmilla is maddeningly good at everything, despite barely even trying in class.

Carmilla notices her staring and winks. "Maybe if you paid more attention to that potion of yours than me, it wouldn't look like…that."

"I wasn't…I just happened to be looking in your general direction"

"Sure you were, cutie."

Laura has no idea how Carmilla can go from outright animosity to flirting and back depending on the day. She's really not sure which Carmilla she hates more.

She looks back to her potion and notices smoke. "Crap." This is going to be a long year.

*

By the time her next patrol rolls around, things have only gotten more busy. She's already had to deal with double potions today, and is really not in the mood for any of the usual Carmilla-shenanigans. She gets to the Great Hall five minutes early (because hope springs eternal), but Carmilla is ten minutes late. She walks towards Laura without a care in the world, it seems.

Laura rolls her eyes and doesn’t even bother, because it’s been a long day and she really just wants to get through this without having the night devolve into another shouting match.

She starts walking upstairs, when she notices that Carmilla is not following her, and instead walking in the complete other direction (it seems that Carmilla gets a kick out of blatantly thumbing her nose at Laura’s carefully devised schedule).

Carmilla doesn’t even look back as she says, “Are you coming or not, cupcake?”

It’s not worth it, Laura reminds herself as she runs after Carmilla. It seems that her newfound equilibrium about the situation with Carmilla disappears any time she’s actually forced to interact with the girl.

She tries imagining her dad’s voice in her head every time Carmillla does or says something that annoys her ( _be the bigger person, Laura_ or _always treat others with respect and understanding_ ), but then she starts hearing some of the other, somewhat contradictory, things that her dad has taught her ( _never take shit from anyone_ and _you deserve to be treated with respect_ ), which—

Laura’s not one to let things go, is the point.

Something must show on her face, because Carmilla says, “That scrunched up face you make when you’re angry is hilarious, buttercup.”

They’ve already walked past the same Edgar Stroulger painting on the sixth floor _three_ times at this point (and haven’t gone anywhere near the second or third floors), which is why Laura snaps, “Would it kill you to use the route map?” in response.

Carmilla smirks and just keeps walking.

Ten minutes later, Carmilla takes out her wand and starts shooting bits of yarn from it, and the pieces gently float towards the ground.

_Seriously?_

“Are you actually five years old?”

“Live a little, creampuff,” she says, while firing off more string from her wand.

“Are you going to pick all of that up? Because I _really_ don’t think Filch would appreciate all of this.” She gestures at the yarn that is hanging off of painting frames and littering the ground.

“Relax, cutie.” She continues walking, leaving dozens of bits of string in her wake.

Laura moves to pick some of it up, before thinking that when Filch _does_ find all this yarn in the corridors come morning, Carmilla will be fired and she would be done with this entire nightmare.

*

Of course, that doesn’t really pan out. Apparently the yarn was charmed to disintegrate or disappear or something because Carmilla’s still a prefect come next week.

Laura’s really trying to not let this whole business with Carmilla affect the rest of her life, but the prospect of having to spend hours with her once every six days is really putting a damper on her joy at being back in the castle.

It’s like the process students go through with the school week but in reverse. The first couple days after patrolling, Laura feels light and carefree. Then, once she’s halfway through the week, the first tendrils of dread start coalescing in her mind, and by the time the day of the next patrol rolls around, she’s a walking storm-cloud.

LaFontaine thinks it would be funny to charm a literal storm-cloud to follow Laura around during dinner, just a few hours before she has to meet Carmilla again.

Laura is not amused.

*

Carmilla raises an eyebrow when she sees Laura (she’s late as usual).

“What’s with the cloud?”

Laura presses her lips together, then says, “It’s supposed to be a literal representation of my mood. I’ve tried to get it to leave me alone, but clearly LaF knows what they’re doing.”

Carmilla’s lips twitch. “It’s not going to rain on me, is it?”

Laura looks up warily. “Honestly, I have no idea.” She tries to poke the cloud with her finger, but it floats up just above her reach. She frowns at Carmilla and shrugs.

As the two of them start walking, the cloud expands to hover over Carmilla as well. She stops and makes a face. Laura looks and sees her take out her wand and point it at the cloud.

“I’ve already tried every spell I can think of and it still won’t budge,” Laura says. Carmilla rolls her eyes before waving her wand and muttering something under her breath. The cloud shrinks before finally popping out of existence.

“How did you do that?” Laura asks excitedly. “What spell did you use??”

Carmilla shrugs and Laura realizes that she’s probably not going to get an answer.

“Well, regardless, thank you for getting rid of LaFontaine’s stupid joke.”

“Just didn’t want to get rained on, cupcake.”

*

But, it's one step forward and two steps back with Carmilla. It seems that Carmilla's tiny concession last night pained her so much that she needs to compensate by being extra unpleasant in class.

Carmilla comes in and takes her usual seat across the aisle from Laura. Being naive, Laura thinks that maybe they've made some progress when Carmilla greets her with an, “Afternoon, cutie” but Carmilla spends literally the entirety of double potions insulting her ( _can you even see over the top of your cauldron?_ ), insulting her friends ( _how have you and the dimwit squad not managed to flunk out?_ ) and backseat brewing ( _are you_ sure _you want to put the unicorn horn in right now?_ and _ah, you really should have stirred before adding the porcupine quills_ ).

Even though Carmilla spends an inordinate amount of time paying attention to what Laura's doing, her potion still turns out perfect, which is probably the most infuriating part of all of this—

Actually, no, the most infuriating part of this is having Carmilla's soft laughter in her ear every time Laura messes something up.

*

This is the final patrol of the month, and Laura is eager to finally close the book on September. Carmilla’s late, again, which really isn’t a surprise at this point.

They manage to catch seven people out after hours (despite it being a Sunday night), including particularly strange encounter which saw a sixth year Ravenclaw debating about a muggle philosopher with a painting on the fourth floor.

The scene was made all the more strange when the painting spotted the two of them and exclaimed, “Carmilla! Explain to this heathen that her understanding of Foucault is categorically wrong!”

“Oh please,” the annoyed Ravenclaw (Mandy? Misty?) sighed. “Carmilla and I have talked _extensively_ about Foucault and we are in complete agreement about implications of his arguments in _Discipline and Punish_ , right?” The girl and the man in the painting both turn towards Carmilla, waiting for an answer.

Carmilla looks between the two of them for a second before rolling her eyes. “Mary, you’re out after hours. Go back to the common room. And Matthew, you know better than to goad students into arguments about Foucault after curfew.”

Mary slinks off after glaring at Matthew. Laura has no idea what to make of any of what she just witnessed, and asks Carmilla, “You read _muggle_ philosophy? And have discussions about it with paintings? Why?”

“Why not?” Carmilla answers in a bored tone.

“I didn’t know you paid attention to muggle culture.”

The painting chuckles. “Do you not know? Carmilla’s muggleborn.” Laura looks at her sharply.

“I…I didn’t know that.” This new information means that Laura will have to completely recalibrate her entire understanding of Carmilla.

Carmilla’s glaring at Matthew now. He laughs again before waving and leaving his frame.

She stalks off in the opposite direction and Laura has to jog to catch up once her surprise fades.

“So, um…” Laura starts, before pausing when Carmilla glares at her as well. She takes a breath and pushes onward against her better judgement, “I won’t tell, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“You can tell the world, I really couldn't care less.”

Okay then. Laura feels like she’s in the middle of a minefield, and has no idea if her next step is going to get her foot blown up. They walk in silence for a while before Laura blurts, “My dad almost stopped me from coming to Hogwarts. He was worried about the whole magic thing after what happened to my mom.”

Carmilla sighs and says, "Please don't take this as an invitation to do that whole  _sharing_ thing."

But, when Laura looks over at her, she notices that Carmilla's body is a lot less rigid than before and feels okay about this "whole sharing thing."


End file.
